The Platinum Ticket by David Beynon

Tuesday, 29 March 2016

Here's another in the series of interviews from last season of Turning Pages. The show concerns itself with all things literary and this particular interview was a real treat for me. At the 2015 Elora Writers' Festival (following which a good number of these interviews were filmed) two of our authors were represented by the same literary agent. When I discovered that she was attending the festival I took her aside and asked her if she would allow me to interview her for the show. It was an excellent opportunity to show our viewers publishing from a different perspective.

Tuesday, 22 March 2016

Here's another interview from Turing Pages that we shot last season. Since the interview, Clifford Jackman has enjoyed some much deserved critical acclaim for his novel, The Winter Family including being shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General's Award. Here's a link to Clifford's CBC interview about the book but before you navigate away, please enjoy my much better interview with him right here...

Tuesday, 8 March 2016

I'd been waiting for some time to hear back from a place where I'd submitted a bit of longer fiction. They'd had the story for (quite) a while but a month or so ago they posted that they were taking longer to make decisions and asked for patience. Well, I heard back from them yesterday and although they said they really enjoyed the story they had filled their available slots and won't know if they'll continue soliciting this length of fiction until they see how this initial offering sells. They apologized for holding the story so long and emphasized how near a miss it was.

That's the way it goes.

On another note - Roxanne and I will be filming a few spots this evening for the new season of TURNING PAGES. Tonight we have a young person who I know very well speaking with Roxanne about British YA novelist, Derek Landy and Roxanne and I will review the novel IRENE by Pierre LeMaitre.

For your viewing pleasure here's an interview from last year's season. I've spoken about Richard Pierpoint, the early black settler who won a tract of land about five hundred meters from where I type for his service in the War of 1812. Author and editor Peter Meyler speaks to me about Captain Dick and another notable early black settler from up Chatsworth way.

Wednesday, 24 February 2016

Here's what might be my favourite author interview from last season. They're all good but there's a lot about my talk with Rio Youers that sets it apart.

The first is that I saw Rio read at one of my very first Elora Writers' Festivals. This was long before I was invited to get involved with the committee that presents the festival each year. He had just published his very short novel, End Times. It's a dark, dark little book. Rio had obviously taken a great deal of time choosing just the right passage for an reading that would pack a punch - but then he noticed a kid in the crowd - a girl - probably around 8 years old.

"Oh my," he said (or words to this effect). "I can't read that part...let's see." He did find a passage that was dark and disturbing but lacked the language and perhaps graphic content of his initial passage.

I love that Rio is local and that he, like me, chose this community to call home. He lives just five minutes from me with his editor wife and young family. There's a moment in the interview when I asked Rio about his first reader and his response could just as easily been my response. My very first reader is also my wife - with similar results. My wife laughed aloud at that part of the interview.

And he's also a really great writer. I enjoyed his book, Point Hollow but I loved Westlake Soul. Read them both - it's time well spent.

The thing I like most about this interview is that it's not the first one we taped for Turning Pages. Rio and I got together a few weeks before this interview was shot at the Fergus Library. We picked out a great windowed spot and Larry Peters, the show's producer, filmed a wonderful segment. The following week Larry approached me somewhat sheepishly while Roxanne and I were shooting some interviews at her bookstore.

"Say, Dave," he said. "I'm really embarrassed and this has never happened before - I somehow lost the footage of that interview you and Rio shot last week."

It was a happy accident because we had originally planned to re-shoot the Rio interview in the same spot - to kind of recreate what had been lost. When I asked the Library if I could take over that particular corner they informed me that there was a tour coming through at the time we'd arranged for the re-shoot with Rio. Since it was a beautiful day, we moved everything outside and, I think, ended up with a fairly good interview.

Here it is - enjoy my conversation with Rio Youers:

To find out more about Rio and his writing, please check out his website by following this link.

Friday, 19 February 2016

The last time I posted here was following Fan-Expo last September. SEPTEMBER! 2015, no less.
A lot has happened since then.
A half dozen assorted holidays and at least three family birthdays.
Different things are currently in the air and I'll have a little something nice to crow about in a few weeks, I think. For now, I'll talk about Turning Pages.

I don't think I've written here about Turning Pages before. Well, last year - back in the aforementioned 2015 and perhaps as far back as 2014 - local cable station, Cogeco Cable 14 here in Fergus approached our local independent book seller, Roxanne Beale, and asked her if she would be interested in creating a "book show" for their station. She told producer, Larry Peters that she was interested but that she'd need some help - a co-host - and she thought of me.

The three of us developed a format and thought of a name - I wanted to call it The Book Club for Shut Ins but I was (quite rightly) overruled and the show is called Turning Pages.

The mandate of the show is to cover all aspects of books, writing, reading, literacy, creativity, poetry etc. We have author interviews, and we've interviewed editors, librarians and had people come on the air and tell us about their favourite author or genre. It's a lot of fun and, from feedback that people give me, well-received in the community.

We shot a full season last year and have just finished an initial planning meeting (over beer and wings) to brainstorm the upcoming season. We'll maintain (mostly) our current 3 x 8 minute segments for 24 minutes (approximately) per show. But we might have a field trip (or two) and we'll try to get outside a little more and try more interesting camera work.

Now, the show is owned by the Cogeco. It is intended for their subscribers but they have generously posted the author interviews on-line so that individual authors who have agreed to be interviewed may link to them from their own websites.

Here's the first interview we did on the show. It's children's author, Lisa Dalrymple.

In the coming weeks - in a effort to be a little more diligent about the blog - I'll post other interviews from last season. For now, enjoy watching and listening to Lisa and Roxanne talk about children's stories...